Like hand in glove -- the more things change, the more they stay the same. The Nazis were, after all, the The National Socialist German Workers Party.

Germany recently passed legislation to label goods coming from the
territories of Israel in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank on the
initiative of their left-wing parties. One interesting aspect of this is
that the same identical legislation was pushed by Germany's main nazi
party last year. Once again we see the ideological convergence of the
modern far left and the old far left nazis becoming mainstream policy in Europe: (thanks to Golem)

The Reichstag building seen from the west. Inscription translates to "For/To the German People" Photo: Wikimedia Commons

MADRID – An initiative by Germany’s neo-Nazi NPD party last year in a state
parliament to demarcate Israeli products came to light this month and closely
resembles the recent Green Party bill that would label Israeli products from
settlements.

The revelation last week that an anti-Israel bill from the
mainstream left-liberal Green Party in the Federal Bundestag mirrors, in key
provisions, the language of a far-right party stirred criticism from Israeli and
German experts on modern anti-Semitism.

“This alliance between the Greens
and the far Right to promote blatant double standards is a huge stain on
Germany’s moral standing,” Prof. Gerald Steinberg, head the
Jerusalem–based group NGO Monitor, told The Jerusalem Post on
Friday.

“Duplicitous product labeling is the thin wedge of the BDS
[Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment] movement, and central to the Durban strategy
of political warfare and demonization that targets Israel,” Steinberg, a
political scientist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, added.

Michael
Schroeren, spokesman for the Green Party in the Bundestag, wrote the Post by
email last week that he “finds it absurd” that one could conclude that the
“Greens were inspired by the neo-Nazis to come to their position” on labeling
products from the West Bank. The Greens flatly deny they are advocating a
boycott of Israeli goods and stress the need to make possible with the label
system an “informed purchasing decision” for consumers in Germany and the wider
EU.

Udo Pastörs, head of the NPD in the eastern German state of
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, introduced a bill last November to label Israeli
products. He has termed Germany a “Jew Republic,” and called the American-Jewish
economist Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve, a “crooked
nose.”

The NPD motion calls for “Palestinian and Israeli products” to be
labeled and for a “clear designation of origin” to be implemented.

Five
months later, the Green Party introduced a federal bill to label “imports of
products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank to Europe and
Germany.”

Henryk M. Broder, one of Europe’s top experts on contemporary
anti-Semitism, wrote last week in a column titled “Two Souls, One Thought” in
the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche that the Green and Nazi parliamentary initiatives
to label products are “at their core identical.”

Both initiatives use the
historical model of the German Nazi regime boycotts of Jewish businesses
starting on April 1, 1933, and invoking the mass slogan: “Germans defend
yourselves. Do not buy from Jews!” Broder wrote.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, head
of the Simon Wiesenthal’s Jerusalem office, told the Post on Thursday, “The fact
that a mainstream German party initiates such a measure is a sad reflection of
the distorted view of Middle East politics so common in recent years in the
political discourse regarding Israel in certain circles of the Federal Republic.
In that respect we see an unfortunate growing erosion of the traditional German
support for the Jewish state which is part of a dangerous tendency in elements
of German society and certain intellectual circles to extricate Germany from its
moral obligations in the wake of the Holocaust.”

Zuroff, the world’s
leading hunter of Nazi war criminals, added, “The initiative by the Green Party
to have all products produced in the disputed territories is clearly
short-sighted and counterproductive and will not help bring Israelis and
Palestinians any closer to real and lasting peace.”

He said the Green
deputy Kerstin Müller, who helped engineer the initiative targeting Israeli
settlement products, is incapable of running her party’s Heinrich Böll
Foundation in Tel Aviv. She is slated to take over as director in late
2013.

“Obviously, a person who played a leading role in this initiative
is uniquely unsuitable to represent the Böll Foundation in Israel, but perhaps
they have an opening available in Ramallah,” Zuroff said.

Marc Berthold,
the outgoing director of the Böll Foundation in Tel Aviv, declined to be
interviewed by the Post. Müller refused to answer Post queries.

Steinberg
urged Israel’s government to examine Müller’s fitness to run the
foundation.

“The Böll Foundation – which exploits German taxpayer funds
to impose its interests and ideology on Israeli democracy – repeatedly violates
civil society norms. It is up to the Israeli political system, including the
Knesset and actual civil society groups that do not represent external
interests, to decide how best to respond to this anti-democratic manipulation,”
Steinberg said.

Israel’s embassy in Berlin accused the Greens of singling
out the Jewish state for disparate treatment.

Ralf Fücks, head of the
Berlin-based Böll Foundation, defended Müller as experienced and capable of
running the Green Party office in Tel Aviv. He declined to respond to a Post
query about the similarities between the neo-Nazi and Green Party initiatives
covering Israeli settlement products.

Comments

The Nazi Left

Like hand in glove -- the more things change, the more they stay the same. The Nazis were, after all, the The National Socialist German Workers Party.

Germany recently passed legislation to label goods coming from the
territories of Israel in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank on the
initiative of their left-wing parties. One interesting aspect of this is
that the same identical legislation was pushed by Germany's main nazi
party last year. Once again we see the ideological convergence of the
modern far left and the old far left nazis becoming mainstream policy in Europe: (thanks to Golem)

The Reichstag building seen from the west. Inscription translates to "For/To the German People" Photo: Wikimedia Commons

MADRID – An initiative by Germany’s neo-Nazi NPD party last year in a state
parliament to demarcate Israeli products came to light this month and closely
resembles the recent Green Party bill that would label Israeli products from
settlements.

The revelation last week that an anti-Israel bill from the
mainstream left-liberal Green Party in the Federal Bundestag mirrors, in key
provisions, the language of a far-right party stirred criticism from Israeli and
German experts on modern anti-Semitism.

“This alliance between the Greens
and the far Right to promote blatant double standards is a huge stain on
Germany’s moral standing,” Prof. Gerald Steinberg, head the
Jerusalem–based group NGO Monitor, told The Jerusalem Post on
Friday.

“Duplicitous product labeling is the thin wedge of the BDS
[Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment] movement, and central to the Durban strategy
of political warfare and demonization that targets Israel,” Steinberg, a
political scientist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, added.

Michael
Schroeren, spokesman for the Green Party in the Bundestag, wrote the Post by
email last week that he “finds it absurd” that one could conclude that the
“Greens were inspired by the neo-Nazis to come to their position” on labeling
products from the West Bank. The Greens flatly deny they are advocating a
boycott of Israeli goods and stress the need to make possible with the label
system an “informed purchasing decision” for consumers in Germany and the wider
EU.

Udo Pastörs, head of the NPD in the eastern German state of
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, introduced a bill last November to label Israeli
products. He has termed Germany a “Jew Republic,” and called the American-Jewish
economist Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve, a “crooked
nose.”

The NPD motion calls for “Palestinian and Israeli products” to be
labeled and for a “clear designation of origin” to be implemented.